It’s a Mad Man’s world

Long before the TV show, novelist Rona Jaffe wrote of young girls battling sexism in ’50s New York, says Suzanne Harrington.

YOU might not have heard of Rona Jaffe, a real character, were it not for Don Draper, a fictional character.

Rona Jaffe published her debut novel, The Best of Everything, in 1958. It’s about a group of young women trying to make it in New York in the early 1950s, a long time before feminism and equality legislation; the title comes from an advert in the New York Times — “You deserve the best of everything, The best job, the best surroundings, the best pay, the best contacts.”